User blog:Looplolpop/About the whole Support changes dilemma
So,first of all,lets go back to season 3.We got all those changes to Oracles,buffing it up and ensuring that people have a use out of it, and while it was weird to not be able to counter it that easily with killing the person,it made for interesting gameplay,since you had to use it when you thought it was the right moment and the enemy could see that you used it and prepare a retreat. Then we got the ward items,making a scene possible where you could get a limited amount of wards up for a certain amount of time for free,and you would have to invest gold if you want to keep more wards up than that.They looked the same as the usual wards,so you could only know if it was a ghost ward if you destroy it and get less gold,making it a sweet game of deciding where to ward and where to expect wards,or just full granting more vision for the team. Then we got the change that if you reveal something and someone else kills a ward inside that true sight,you would still get that gold,and therefore diminishing the weird thoughts of greedy ADCs saying:"But i need the money from the ward!" Then we had items like Eleisia's Miracle and the masteries known for long,which made some summoners better just by spending one point,and which werent countering,but enhancing summoners.They made Clairvoyance,Exhaust and others so much better,from passive to active bonuses to cooldown enhancements. Then we had the Gp/10,which were useful since we got gold even if we werent in lane and we got time to go ward,go help others,go being useful to everyone,and since we could stack them,we could just go and build two if we need more gold lategame for dropping it earlygame,granting us supports the ability to snowball harder. And then we got Season 4. One little question: Why build up so much to turn around and go another direction.Oracle got scrapped,wards were limited more,Vision wards turned into niche items rather than gameplay enhancers,and supports are bound to their lanes.But lets go through each one step by step. Limited wards.This is usually said to be good since it increases the warding everyone needs to do and helps restricting the maximum vision so a team can more easily take down the wards of the enemy team.However,we got a problem with this.This was made to reduce warding wars,since with limited warding and limited means of destroying them,we cant go on forever destroying them.However,nowadays a team can have up to 15 wards up as a total.With the limited amount of pink wards and the cooldown of sweeping totems,it is that even if you know as a team where every single of the 15 wards is,you can only destroy a maximum of ten without going back or waiting for the cooldown to drop.This means in turn for paying (500g+potential wards*(2/3 of 75=50)=) 750 gold you take down vision and get gold for about 300 Gold.This does not limit warding wars,it breaks it.You have no reason to go for long-term isolation from the map right now.So if we have the opposide of Warding Wars,what do we have then? Trinkets.The concept is pretty cool.You get one ward/one 5 second pink wards/one mini CV for free,they upgrade when you get a higher level and you can invest money to make them better.The only big problem i have with it is that they are completely flawed earlygame. : You want the ward as support since you want permanent vision for free?Too bad,the CD of it is double the warding time,so either you force your lanemate to get the same item and limit the choices until level 9 or you invest money and get some additional wards,making permanent warding as hard to maintain as before.The point for a ward as in the wriggles lantern was to have a ward you can shift around faster but which makes it harder to ward the same place again.The trinket grants a ward that will only be of use half of the time. :: You want the sweeping lens so you can counterward for additional gold?You do well with this,since the CD is the same as the totem,but if you guess wrong,too bad,you cant take a second chance and have to wait,also you will have less wards yourself since you have 1/2 wards less per minute for taking this trinket.Also,have fun rushing past wards while using it to screw your enemy over. :: You want the Orb to be able to scout outside of lane without having to give up your summoner spell?Okay,use it.CONGRATULATIONS! You just earned the cooldown of the week,with a mini CV with a fifth of the cooldown and a 2.5 times the cooldown.Have fun without a ward,stupid! :: You decide to get your Sightstone early and change the trinket? Here,we got a deal for ya.You get the trinket with an additional cooldown to boot.Nice,isnt it? So,we go into lane,we get farm with our farming items,and you may have picked up the coin.Now you need to ward,you expect an early gank.You go and just lost about 10 gold early game,since you need to stay real close to them.Heal at tower?It is the same with any other item,except the SoW items.These are ok with you leving the lane.But oh god,if your ally leaves the lane! Next we go to pink wards.Unlike others,i like the idea of having them visible and high HP.You can harrass the enemy while he attacks it and if you place it correctly,you can get vision for far longer than 3 minutes.However,since you can only place one per champion,you will have no use taking it to destroy wards.You rather keep it as a long-time bait,just waiting the enemy to catch on so you reel in the kill.This is most likely not what was expected by Riot,but it kinda works. But lategame,you have a lot of gold,and you get the power of sometimes having more gold than your jungler or ADC since you have all the income changes,and thats fine.However,sooner or later,you will be with your support item build,and you ask yourself if you should sell your ruby sightstone for another item useful for everyone or keep it for the oh-so-needed Vision.This is a problem since you reach your gold cap earlier caused by low item costs.You might see it as a positive,but a cap that is reached so early just reeks of too much gold gotten and imbalanced gold gain,therefore people who can work with more gold can be put into the support role,adding up to the,how i call it, "Annie-Dilemma". The reason this expanded so highly is that we got supports who have high money and no way to pump this amount of gold into the team.These design faults make it all too easy to make a jump from support to APC/Fulltank/Whatever,finally robbing us of the support role on its own. You may say that it is still preseason and they can fool around with the gameplay for now and test drastic changes,but then again,the vision changes before preseason were big as well.I realized that this isnt the change making something new for the sake of trying if it works, but rather that this is already an attempt to fix a problem. So,all in all,i can see some good in this,i wont say something like "BB league,i play dota 2" since it is still fine,but i want people to see that not everything that shines is gold.It could be Uran. Category:Blog posts